Galaxy Roller Rink
Here’s a pastel of mom and daughter skating together. I was going to do a vignette, but then I started wanting to do a pink/green contrast thing. I started with a green that was too warm. So I cooled it down and I think how loose it is has captured the movement and the light of that moment. If I’d left it as a vignette then I’d feel less compelled to get the far wall into the painting than I am currently. But the size of the painting lends itself to something less rendered. It’s pretty enough as it stands anyway.
Color Study for Penelope's Canvas
We have a large concrete retaining wall out front that our daughters draw on with chalk often. I’m thinking of doing a large version of this painting at some point. I think that the dress and its movement were what got my attention initially, but I tried to capture the color of it and, as a result, I think the cool green of the dress and the coolness of the concrete although harmonizing has pulled her too far into the painting. I really like the texture of the paper here. It’s done a lot of work to make this feel like concrete. The trashbag on the left is more or less a confusing lump, and I’m not a “trash” painter so I’m not sure why I even included it except that I wanted some dark shapes in the foreground to lead the viewer in. I’ll not likely paint the trash into the final, larger painting. I like the sheerness of the dress sleeves, but it was tough to do much overglazing at this size on the arm just due to the size of the pastels I’m using, so I’ll play with that on the bigger patinging maybe. I do think it looks mostly fine a it is and it was less important to the overall image anyway. What will likely happen is that I’ll change the lighting a bit so that she casts a shadow onto the ground in front of her, and then I will also try and get some branches from the little bushes on top of the wall that cut across the concrete to create a bit more depth. And then I’ll instensify the warmth of the pink in the potted flower and have it overlap the figure. The hop scotch is out of walk because I didn’t draw it in perspective; I was in a hurry so it was more important to get the idea down than to execute it correctly.
Albert Handell Study
I don’t paint a lot of architecture, and I’m starting to get tired of just painting dead trees, so I’m looking to Albert Handell for inspiration again. This is a study done from his painting “The Scottish Rite Temple.” In his book Intuitive Light, Handell shows this painting while talking about shadows and how they are affected by light in various situations. I’m currently working on a talk for this subject to give to the Northern Indiana Pastel Society at some point in January or February of 2026. I don’t plan to make this a finished painting (it’s not really my composition), but this was a helpful exercise to see what he did with the shadows in various places. One of the things that is notably different between his original and mine is that the ground plan in mine is much curvier, and part of the reason is that I took a photo of painting and the page was curved. It affected the way I painted the cast shadows of the trees outside the frame and I hadn’t even intended for that to happen. He also painted on sanded board, and I did this on mi-teinte paper that I put a coat of gessoe on in order to give it some more tooth. I do this sometimes now in order to use the mi-teinte paper rather than do studies on my better papers while still getting a rougher surface to work on. I have found that the gessoed surface doesn’t really take the Diane Townsend terrages very well, and that it eats up my Terry Ludwigs too. The unisons I use on the gessoed surface work great and so do my rembrandts (those are my workhorses currently, and I’ve been pleased with them).
The holiday season is coming up, so I am gong to start cranking out some 5x7s.
Going to the Sun Road
This is a painting I did from a photo I took when we drove “Going to the Sun Road” this summer.
What am I doing?
I finished my most recent novel and am querying agents, so it’s time to move on to more projects.
I’ve started a comic that I’m not sure if it’ll be a strip or a by-issue type. Currently I am just drawing a lot of the character and figuring him and his world out.
I also started a western that I’m writing for my dad.
I’m still painting landscapes and portraits. The following is not complete, but it’s of my oldest daughter wrapping her grandma’s bday gifts. I did it in oil because it’s small and I can’t do small things with any detail in pastel, at least not in a way that pleases me.
There’s an update. Huzzah?
Novel Break
I’m taking a few days off from working on the new novel. Going to use that time to focus on more dead tree paintings and portraits. Then I’ll get back to it.
Northern Indiana Pastel Society Show
I’m chugging along on my novel again, and because it’s consumed so much of my brain space I completely forgot to post that I have two paintings up in the Colfax Cultural Center in South Bend.
I was lucky enough to have one of my paintings selected as a winner alongside the work of three other society members (Mary Meehan Firtl, Daniel J. Slattery, and Elizabeth Kuntz). There is a lot more work there by other members as well.
Joining this organization has been a wonderful experience and I really am grateful for the guidance and fellowship of the members.
If you have time to go to the gallery to check out the work (much of it is for sale), then please do:
914 Lincoln Way W
South Bend, IN 46616
The gallery is on the first floor, first door on the right after ascending the staircase. The hours for viewing are Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1-4. The show runs until October 17th.
This is the painting of mine that was the judge selected. “Tent City, PSAB 2003”. Because it was a little confusing, and I understand, PSAB stands for Prince Sultan Air Base which was where I was stationed in 2002 and 2003 in the USAF. We had to build a tent city for the influx of troops prior to the invasion of Iraq. Since I didn’t take many photos at the time, this is an imagined portrait of myself
This is the other painting. “Follow Me, Daddy.” It’s form a reference photo my wife took when we were hiking the Hidden Lake Trail at Glacier national park this summer.
Okay. I was, and am, grateful to the Northern Indiana Pastel Society for organizing this show and for letting me be a part of it. Thank you to Justin Barfield for judging the show. Thank you to everyone in the Northern Indiana Pastel Society for sharing their work.
More Athena Drawings
These are drawings with goddesses and little soldiers. I may do a painting eventually, but right now there is a lot of this in my head and there’s no way I can keep up with them all if I slow down to paint them instead of doing them in this style.
This is what my novel looks like.
Hard to believe I made it to a stage where I can do a hard copy revision, but I did.
